The legal basis for the right to religious freedom (and the right of conscience) is the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .” This clause is extended to state and local states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

Series intro: There’s a scene in the sitcom The Office in which Oscar, an accountant, attempts to explain a budget surplus to his boss, Michael Scott. “Why don’t you explain this to me like I’m an 8-year-old,” Michael says. When Oscar explains it in a simpler manner, his boss remains perplexed. “Why don’t you explain this to me like I’m 5,” Michael says.

The world, like accounting, can be complicated. Sometimes it helps to have concepts or ideas explained to us like we’re a child—not because we’re dumb or simple-minded, but because we may need a basic understanding of the whole before we can understand how it all fits together.

Or at least that’s how I approach my work. As the current affairs editor, my role at TGC is primarily to be an explanatory journalist and to “make complicated things clear, quickly.” Because I often write about topics I’m unfamiliar with, I start by trying to understand an issue “like I’m an 8-year-old” (or at least a high-school student). Once I have a basic framework of understanding I add in details from my research until I feel I understand it enough to explain it in a way that “makes complicated things clear.” I then take out as many details as possible so that it can be explained “quickly.”

In this series, I’ll apply this technique in a more structured manner. The hope is that by providing three levels of explanation—each saying essentially the same thing, though increasing in complexity—you and I can both gain a better understanding of a concept, idea, or issue.

Each year, the President of the United States declares January 16 to be Religious Freedom Day, and calls upon Americans to observe this day through appropriate events and activities that commemorate religious freedom.

In honor of the commemoration, here are three explanations about what religious freedom means in America.

1. Basic Explanation

Religious freedom is a right, given by God and guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, that allows individual people or groups to practice a religion—or to practice no religion at all—both in private and also in public with a minimal amount of interference from the local, state, or federal government. The Constitution and other federal and state law protect this right to determine both what we believe and, in a more limited sense, how we act on those beliefs.

2. Intermediate Explanation

Religious freedom is rooted in the idea that the government should not, without a compelling reason, be able to violate a person’s conscience. The conscience, as Andy Naselli and J. D. Crowley explain, is “your consciousness of what you believe is right and wrong.” During the founding period when the Bill of Rights was written, the term “conscience” was often used as synonymous with “religion.” Thus, the concept of freedom of religious and freedom of conscience have often been used somewhat interchangeably.

The legal basis for the right to religious freedom (and the right of conscience) is the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .” This clause is extended to state and local states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

However, the courts haven’t always interpreted the clause in a way that protected religious freedom. So a federal law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was passed in 1993 to prevent other federal laws from substantially burdening a person’s free exercise of religion.

3. Advanced Explanation

Religious freedom is a legal right that flows from the moral right to conscience. It is rooted in the idea, as Melissa Moschella explains, “that as human beings we have a grave obligation to seek the truth, and to follow the truth as we understand it.” As Moschella adds,

Conscience rights go to the core of what it is to be a human person: the capacity to act based not only on desires or instincts, but on judgments about what is good and bad, right and wrong—and the moral responsibility that is inseparable from that capacity. To force a person to act contrary to conscience is to force him to violate his moral integrity. It is an assault on the person at his core, much worse than any merely physical harm.

For Christians, acting against one’s conscience is not only a violation of moral integrity by an act of sin. As the apostle Paul says, “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).”

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